Toondoo.com: Bringing out your inner cartoonist.

Erica Lane
Oct 6, 2015
3 min read

The website and creation tool Toondoo is a great tool for creating comic strips and short books in the classroom. This tool gives you the option of choosing a comic strip that is the length you prefer. You can choose from a wide range of characters to use in your comic strips. These characters include cartoon bears, men, women, children, animals, sport players, unusual characters like monsters, famous characters, emoticons, and even stick figures. These characters are doing a wide variety of actions and show a variety of emotions so it will be nearly impossible to not be able to find a character that would work in a particular situation. There is also a range of background theme choices—scenery, abstract, space, fantasy, sports, landmarks, indoors and outdoors. There are tons of prop options as well as speech bubble varieties. You can even choose a specific artist and choose from that artist’s particular work. If there was a drawing or picture of your own that you wanted to upload, that is an option as well. You can doodle and even create your own characters!

To use this tool, you simply choose a background, character, speech bubble, etc. and it will appear in your strip. You can then click on that specific tool and lock it to the page. You can shrink or enlarge the tool, clone it, rotate or flip it, or arrange it differently on the page. This tool is extremely user friendly, even for young users.

This tool can be accessed simply by visiting toondoo.com. In order to begin creating, the user will need to register for free using an email address and a username and password of their choice. Once you’ve created a comic strip or book, you can save what you’ve created and print or share. There is even an option to leave feedback on the creation—what a great tool for the classroom. If you are having troubles with Toondoo, you can visit their wikihelp page to read about how to use the tool as well as get new ideas about using Toondoo. You can search the site for keywords and it will bring up strips or books that match that word to spark new ideas or to use as student examples. You can also use the Toondoo teacher guide (found here ) or the teacher training video (found here) to learn how to use the tool.

This tool could be used in 2nd grade classroom at the beginning of the year as a community building or “get to know you” project. The students could be introduced to comics and the form they take as well as the way you read comics. Then, the students could create a 3-4 strip comic about themselves. These comics could be shared between classmates or in front of the entire class so the students could get to know each other in an untraditional manner. These comic strips could even be hung in the classroom or taped to the students’ desks.

Toondoo could also be used in a 4th grade classroom when discussing organization of writing. Comics are organized in a unique and specific way—students could learn about the organization and build of comics. Then, the teacher could read the beginning of a comic to the students. As a learning activity or assessment tool, the students would create a 4-section comic strip finishing the comic the teacher began reading to them. Their comic strips should match the beginning of the comic they already read, as well as use a caption box, speech bubble, and thought bubble. The students should only use short sentences and use characters that have emotions that really tell a lot about the story since their sentences are so short. The teacher would assess the student’s understanding of the flow of comics and the way they are organized.